170 AMONG OTHERS

ing up at unlikely hours to inquire what was the
Prime Minister's handicap at golf and what he ate
for breakfast. Malcolm hid in an upper room and
read economics. In the midst of it all, the Prime
Minister sat in his study, with neuritis and a touch
of influenza, and prepared the answers to an inter-
minable list of Members' Questions for the morrow.
This was Sunday, a day of comparative rest.
Normally he would be coming back from the House
at 11.30 p.m., sitting up with Foreign Office
despatches till two or three, and getting up again
before seven.

There was turmoil of another kind at Chequers
that summer. It was a blazing afternoon and the
grass beside the long drive over the chalk hill was
carpeted with yellow rock-rose. A surprising number
of men in dark suits clustered on the rose-terrace on
our left as we drove up* A detective ran up to stop
us, but, recognising Malcolm, drew back* At the
door another detective explained that he had forty-
three journalists and photographers to keep quiet;
he was about to line them up on the terrace in
readiness for MacDonald a,nd Herriot. They were at
coffee but would soon be coming out. A minute or
two later we were peering down from a first floor
window on the assembled Fourth Estate. It clustered
in the sunlight, adjusting focuses and chattering.
An enormous yellow-faced Frenchman with a blue-
black beard and whiskers sat apart in the summer-
house and brooded morosely. Summoned to the hall,
we found Malcolm's three sisters, Herriot's secretary,
a man from the Quai d'Orsay, M. Cammerlinck, the
interpreter, and Sir Ronald Waterhouse. Herriot,